To accompany the Finnish Landscape exhibition, Checkpoint Helsinki is producing a series of events – discussions, film screenings, workshops and guided tours – that interpret the exhibition and bring it alive. The events view the exhibition and Seurasaari Open-Air Museum through the eyes of artists, archipelago residents, a conservator, squirrels, curators, True Finns, and guides.
Entrance to the supplementary programme with museum entry ticket. See Museum opening times and ticket prices here.
More events will be added to the programme during the summer.
Sat 11.6. Opening Day 11-17
See the program from here
Wed 15.6. The ringed seal and the sea eagle – poster workshop in the spirit of Erik Bruun.
12:00-15:00, Manor House garden, minimum age 9.
Language: Finnish
In his posters throughout his career, graphic designer Erik Bruun, who also designed the poster for this exhibition, has accentuated a theme that is important to him – nature conservation. One of Bruun’s best-known works is his Saimaa-ringed-seal poster for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation.
What is important to you? What do you want to protect and leave for future generations? What would you like to influence? At the workshop you can follow Erik Bruun’s working method to design and make your own poster.
Fri 17.6. Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Fri 1.7. Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Wed 6.7. Vai/lkea history *
14.00 Discussion, The Florin Summer house & Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
A discussion about the shared ground of art, history and activism from the point of view of Ahmed Al-Nawas' and Minna Henriksson's installation Valkeat. The installation makes reference to the role of racial hygiene in nationalistic thinking in Finland in the early 20th century. How do art and research approach the difficult questions of the past and our times, such as racism in its different forms? What kind of a history do we encounter in the displays and narrations of museums?In conversation: artist Minna Henriksson, researcher Marjo Liukkonen whose recent study focuses on racial hygiene in the Finnish civil war of 1918, and researcher Uyi Osazee, who studies contemporary racism and ethnic profiling. Mikko Teräsvirta, the keeper of Seurasaari Open-Air Museum, will comment on the discussion from the museum's perspective. The discussion is moderated by art historian Oscar Ortiz-Nieminen.
* The title of the discussion makes reference to the title of Al-Nawas and Henriksson's work Valkeat and to the Finnish word for 'difficult' – 'vaikea'. The title Valkeat doesn't translate well into English. It is the plural of valkea, which means both white and fire. Since 1954, a traditional bonfire is lit in Seurasaari every summer solstice. This festive midsummer event is known as "Juhannusvalkeat." The concept of whiteness connects to the Finnish nation-building project on many levels.
Fri 8.7. Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Fri 15.7. Preservation and destruction
Discussion, Summer house from the Moisio manor
14:00
Language: Finnish
Questions of preservation and destruction are very much present in the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum, where listed museum buildings are a part of the living natural environment. What timeline do we apply when viewing our environment? What do we decide to preserve? The conservator’s work involves choices and actions that result in parts of our cultural heritage being preserved for posterity. House of Khronos by the artist duo IC-98, currently at Lönnström Art Museum, calls into question our conceptions of time and of what is to be preserved. The work fences off a house and garden, making them inaccessible to human beings for 1000 years.
In conversation:
Director, Lönnström Art Museum, Jenny Nybom
National Board of Antiquities Building Conservator working at Seurasaari Open-Air Museum Nanna Kymäläinen
Wed 20.7. Sciurus vulgaris
Lecture
14:00
Language: Finnish
Sciurus vulgaris considers how to find and give greater visibility to diverse overlooked narratives about the shared history and present of Seurasaari’s nature and culture.
The lecture will be given by a working group made up of Felicia Honkasalo, Akuliina Niemi and Sinna Virtanen. In its works this collective deals with the interface between art and science. Their previous body of work is based on the life of the English natural historian Mary Anning, whose paleontological finds, including the first Ichthyosauri (fish lizards), overturned the scientific community’s conception of the origins and history of the world.
Fri 22.7. Guided tour
14:00, starts at ticket kiosk
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Sun 24.7. True Finn and Archipelago Science Fiction
Film screenings
14:00, Duration 1 hour 15 mins, Halla House
Language: Finnish/Swedish, subtitles: English
Sunday-afternoon screening of Yael Bartana’s True Finn and Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen’s Archipelago Science Fiction. True Finn asks what do we mean when we talk about Finnish identity right now? What is true Finnishness? In this film produced by the IHME Contemporary Art Festival seven Finns with different backgrounds live in a country cottage in reality-TV style and, for example, create new lyrics for the Finnish national anthem. Archipelago Science Fiction shows four possible images of the future of the Turku Archipelago. The film is based on answers to questionnaires given by archipelago residents, who also appear in the work.
Wed 27.7. The ringed seal and the sea eagle – poster workshop in the spirit of Erik Bruun.
12:00-15:00, Manor House garden, minimum age 9.
Language: Finnish
In his posters throughout his career, graphic designer Erik Bruun, who also designed the poster for this exhibition, has accentuated a theme that is important to him – nature conservation. One of Bruun’s best-known works is his Saimaa-ringed-seal poster for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation.
What is important to you? What do you want to protect and leave for future generations? What would you like to influence? At the workshop you can follow Erik Bruun’s working method to design and make your own poster.
Fri 29.7. Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Sat 30.7. Mythcrafting
Lecture
14:00, Antti farmstead
Language: English
The lecture deals with the relative nature and mutability of mythologies – with the way they can be oriented towards both the past and the future. It borrows the concept of mythcrafting from the book Solution 239-246, Finland: The Welfare Game*, and, for instance, ponders the alchemical potential of science fiction or Jenna Sutela’s recent Orgs project, which compares the behaviours of organisms and organizations.
The lecture will be given by artist and Checkpoint Helsinki Board member Jenna Sutela.
*Martti Kalliala, with Jenna Sutela and Tuomas Toivonen, Sternberg Press 2011
Fri 5.8 Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Fri 12.8 Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Sat 13.8 Coordinator’s Tour
14:00, starts at the Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: English
Checkpoint Helsinki’s coordinator Saara Karhunen talks about the works in the Finnish Landscape exhibition and their production: What is a bulldozer blade and how is it linked to contemporary art? How do you install electricity in a smoke cottage? What connects the realtors in the reality-TV series Million Dollar Listing New York to the making of the exhibition?
Wed 17.8. Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Wed 17.8. Artist talk: Ilya Orlov
15:00, Kahiluoto manor
Language: English
Artist Ilya Orlov will discuss his work A House with the View at the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum's Kahiluoto manor house.
Wed 17.8 Concrete Questions: Who is the people? And whose world is the world?
Viewpoints on the "Finnish Landscape" exhibition by Nora Sternfeld with the artists Ahmed Al-Nawas and Minna Henriksson
16:00
Language: English
The intervention Valkeat by Ahmed Al-Nawas and Minna Henriksson makes reference to the 1962 World Festival of Youth and Students, which gathered together members of different liberation struggles. In their work Al-Nawas and Henriksson juxtapose the bourgeois democratic notion of independency through which people were made and shaped to become suitable for the nation, and the notion of independency of many anti-colonialist liberation struggles, where it was the people who made the nation. Taking the work as a starting point we will use the concrete questions of Bertolt Brecht’s “Solidarity Song” to discuss the concepts of “the people”, “the world” and “independence” as embattled terrain in history and today.
Nora Sternfeld is an art educator and curator, who is interested in contemporary art, exhibition theory, teaching methods, the relationship between history and politics, and anti-racism. She has been a Professor of Practice, Curating and Mediating Art at Aalto University since 2012.
Fri 19.8 Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Fri 26.8 Guided tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish and English
Guided tour of the exhibition. Duration 1 hour.
Sat 27.8 Coordinator’s Tour
14:00, starts at Iisalmi Parsonage
Language: Finnish
Checkpoint Helsinki’s coordinator Saara Karhunen talks about the works in the Finnish Landscape exhibition and their production: What is a bulldozer blade and how is it linked to contemporary art? How do you install electricity in a smoke cottage? What connects the realtors in the reality-TV series Million Dollar Listing New York to the making of the exhibition?
Sun 28.8. The ringed seal and the sea eagle – poster workshop in the spirit of Erik Bruun.
12:00-15:00, Manor House garden, minimum age 9.
Language: Finnish
In his posters throughout his career, graphic designer Erik Bruun, who also designed the poster for this exhibition, has accentuated a theme that is important to him – nature conservation. One of Bruun’s best-known works is his Saimaa-ringed-seal poster for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation.
What is important to you? What do you want to protect and leave for future generations? What would you like to influence? At the workshop you can follow Erik Bruun’s working method to design and make your own poster.
Guided tours of the Finnish Landscape exhibition can be booked for €50.
Contact: seurasaari@kansallismuseo.fi / +358 (0)295 336912
Artists Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Jumana Manna and Haig Aivazian giving a reading on the opening day of Finnish Landscape. Photo: Noora Geagea